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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



something to eat) is reconstructed, and his 

 weapons, methods of hunting, language, and 

 clothes are discussed. The accident by which 

 the bow and arrow were discovered is graph- 

 ically related. Methods of capturing large 

 and small game, the variations of different 

 tribes due to varied surroundings, and, in 

 fact, a detailed description of the manners 

 and customs of man in the time of the cave 

 dwellers is worked out with considerable in- 

 genuity and care. The book is evidently the 

 result of a considerable study by Mr. Water- 

 loo of geological ethnology, and will be 

 found very entertaining by all who are at all 

 familiar with geologic history. The psychol- 

 ogist will be entertained by the mentality 

 with which the author has endowed his 

 primitive characters. The book is also 

 rather attractive in appearance, despite its 

 excessively modern binding. 



A third edition of Mr. Albert H. Chester's 

 Catalogue of Minerals Alphabetically Ar- 

 ranged, and giving their chemical composition 

 and synonyms, is published by John Wiley 

 & Sons. The catalogue has been intended 

 from the beginning to embrace all English 

 names in current use in the nomenclature of 

 mineralogy, including species, varieties, and 

 synonyms, and omitting dead and useless 

 names. In the present edition, which has 

 been revised and entirely reset, all names 

 added up to date have been inserted in their 

 proper order. 



Prof. Clarence Moores Weed has endeav- 

 ored, in his Life Histories of American Insects 

 (Macmillan Company, $1.50), to present in a 

 nontechnical manner the results of his obser- 

 vations of a few of the most interesting spe- 

 cies, some of which he has especially studied 

 during the last ten years ; while for other 

 sketches he has drawn upon his fellow en- 

 tomologists. Among the more curious or 

 more familiar insects thus presented and de- 

 scribed are the crickets, walking sticks, grass- 

 hoppers, army worm, the insect of raspberry 

 canes, insects that mark apple and oak leaves, 

 wasps, hornets, aphides, and spiders, includ- 

 ing " daddy longlegs." The style of the book 

 is attractive, the descriptions are clear, and 

 the illustrations are numerous and excellent. 



Professor Kingdey's Elements of Compar- 

 ative Zoology is intended as an introduction 

 to the serious study of the subject, and em- 



braces directions for laboratory work upon a 

 selected series of animal types, together with 

 a general account of related forms. By com- 

 bining the functions of a laboratory guide 

 and a general outline of zoology, it has been 

 possible to emphasize the comparative side 

 of the subject. But " it is not sufficient to 

 ask one to compare a grasshopper and a 

 beetle, pointing out their resemblances and 

 points of difference; leading questions must 

 be asked." Such questions are furnished, 

 and when the student has answered them he 

 may be supposed to have " a tolerably com- 

 plete statement of the principal characters 

 of the larger groups of the animal kingdom." 

 Types have been selected for detailed study, 

 partly with regard to the facility of obtain- 

 ing them and partly to their adaptability to 

 being worked out by average students, and 

 the work has been made largely macroscopic. 

 Laboratory work is insisted upon as the most 

 important (H. Holt & Co., New York). 



Faith or Fact, by Henry M. Taber, with 

 preface by Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll (Peter 

 Ecker, publisher, New York, $1), is dedicated 

 to the lovers of mental freedom, and partic- 

 ularly to those who have had to endure op- 

 probrium from orthodox Christianity. It 

 is described in the title page as " illustrating 

 conflicts between credulity and vitalized 

 thought, superstition and realism, tradition 

 and verity, dogma and reason, bigotry and 

 tolerance, ecclesiastical error and manifest 

 truth, theology and rationalism, miracle and 

 immutable law, pious ignorance and secular 

 intelligence, hypocrisy and sincerity, theoc- 

 racy and democracy." It is devoted to the 

 criticism of the orthodox branch of Chris- 

 tianity, which the author thinks that system 

 has invited by the course it has pursued in 

 various respects. 



Who would have imagined that the 

 problem of the universe could be solved in a 

 book of sixty-five small pages ? Great as the 

 task is supposed to be, that is what seems to 

 be attempted by Mr. John E. Atwood in his 

 essay on the Constituents of the Universe 

 (James Edward Friend, publisher, San Diego, 

 Cal.). The doctrine of the book, which is 

 enlarged upon in various applications, is that 

 " space extent or room and time continu- 

 ation or motion, are the three great essentials 

 that comprise or constitute the universe " i 



